Israel’s current leadership seems to be leaning toward a hardline solution, and given the lack of influence of the United States, no longer seems to be particularly interested in what anyone else thinks. Also, I do not believe they will find it possible to stop the attacks from the West Bank without a political settlement, which doesn’t seem even remotely possible at this time.
So I’m going to predict that something like the following will happen: Israel declares that the Gaza Strip is “Palestine” and removes the Israeli settlements from there. It also temporarily seizes northern Gaza, then dumps most of the West Bank Palestinians there, bulldozing their former homes to keep them from returning. Israel then pulls completely out of Gaza, while maintaining a heavily fortified cordon around it. It also tells the Europeans that if they don’t like it they can resettle the Palestinians in their countries.
This of course turns Israel into a pariah state, but it decides that that is preferable to insecurity. I have no idea if this would work in the long term, but at this point I see no indication that the current leadership has the ability to think long term.
I don’t believe that this will work. If Israel leaves any Palestinians at all alive, then the deeply **egregious **situtation predicted by capacitor earlier will be realized. There is a well-known solution for a long-lasting peace that will leave everyone in the region alive, happy and well, but it is politically unacceptable and, so, not worth mentioning.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Capacitor: When you wrote “…will make al-Qaeda look like a bunch of rich Arabs bored with their lives,” I believe that al-Qaeda mostly are a bunch of rich Arabs bored with their lives.
